Ashley Madison and the moral high ground

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Where do you stand on this?

Personally I don't like the site, or dishonesty. However it is not illegal.

However I don't condone sharing private information about people. As they haven't committed a crime, they are still entitled to privacy regardless of if they are a slime-ball or not.

I'm also skeptical the site was hacked over moral concern, most likely it was opportunism for the lolz.

Also they made inconsistent statements concerning AM data policy, yet revealed the data anyway.

There is a massive problem with assuming we know these people and their circumstances, or even that the names are the who people think they are. Mob justice is never a good approach.

Of course it was for the lulz.

I've been divorced. Churches here in the UK are a lot more misgiving than is maybe the case in the USA. I don't believe in adultery and know my wife would be broken hearted. I wouldn't hurt my wife, neither would I hurt another man. It's not just stealing, but stealing another person's life.

You asked where we stand on this, but now I've said it I'm not sure ranting on about it would be very productive. I don't feel able to claim any high moral ground myself.

You can state your view without claiming moral high ground though.

On the side of Social Darwinism.

If a person is stupid enough to seek an affair ... if a person is stupid enough to seek an affair online ... if a person is stupid enough to have an affair ... if a person is stupid enough to leave evidence of his or her infidelity where it can be found ... then that person deserves to be caught and must endure the consequences.

If you give your word to be faithful, then you must keep your word to be faithful, else be treated as untrustworthy by everyone that matters for the rest of your life. That's ethics.

Legality and morality have nothing to do with it.

I think the hackers chose the site because it advertises itself as a place for cheaters to go have affairs but that wasn't the sole reason. They wanted to hack something and being what that site is, it's easier to rationalize that hack rather than, say, hacking a Red Cross site.

Hackers would look at a Red Cross site and pass it up thinking how many people have been helped. Most do not view enabling married people to cheat on their spouses as a noble cause.

Publishing all those names and info would have far more impact than some other site, as these people would most likely be sneaking behind their loved ones' backs to engage in clandestine behavior. So I do fully believe the nature of that site and reputation was a key factor in it being targeted.

Do I think it's justified? Hacking never seems to be justified, is frowned upon and is against the law. However, if a spouse can find their partner's name in that jumble of millions, and find out what is really going on, more power to them! Let them. Plus they got to figure out the Dark Web, {TOR} too and who wants to smell like an onion? So, there's two stumbling blocks unless someone publishes it someplace else. Dunno if they've done that. All I know is Josh Duggar's name and address was one of the 32 million.

That being said, if whomever created that site got all those 32 million to pay money, he has made billions of dollars.

Whether they did it for morality or for the lulz, the hackers ruined lives because they could, and I'd see theirs ruined in turn if it were up to me.

There are no ethics in social darwinism, it's merely a race to the top of the pyramid by any means necessary. Under social darwinism their only fault was getting caught, not that they attempted to get what they want by any means necessary. At least that's the way it's practiced in the real world. Fact is you're not gonna get to the top of the social pyramid if you don't cheat, lie, etc. because if you don't someone else will and they've probably got every other skill you yourself have.

As for the site itself, not much of a story imo. People cheat, people get caught, people hack, etc. The only real interest to me is finding out how hard the site is going to get s**t hammered in court. Even if they have the moral high ground due to hacking no public figure is going to risk their own bacon defending a site for adulterers, that includes judges-- who are always looking for the next bench up. I do actually see it as a plus for general morality though. Forget the ethics of hacking or motives hackers had in this case, they demonstrated that sleezy unethical s**t is an easy and lucrative target for attention, with the net result being that less people will engage in it...hopefully.

It's not right what they did. Unless it involved someone younger then 16, or a situation where there was no consent between humans, it isn't a moral issue that should concern others. I don't care about people's affairs or sexual lives, and I certainly don't want to know, and don't think that it's anyone else's business. If there's any justice in this world, those hackers will be made to pay for what they did.

Get used to it, nothing you do or say on the internet is truly anonymous. Even on this site all it would take is a hacker to gain access to the user database table and they'll have a username, possibly a real name, and likely last known ip address (which is the internet equivalent of a phone number). With that information they could browse for posts you've made and tie it to a residence and therefore BillyBob205's comment becomes [John Doe, apt. 7, 666 I Didnt Know Street, Mobile Alabama].

That doesn't matter, you're conflating ability with morality. What these hackers did was immoral.

Although what the hackers did is illegal and if anyone gets caught hacking, they will face a court and if they are found guilty, will have to pay the consequences, I do not blame them for ruining anyone's lives. It is the cheaters who are involved in deception and lies who are their own worst enemies. If anything is getting ruined, it is because of their lies. In other words, tell your spouse what you are doing and it won't matter if sites like that get hacked a million times over. There won't be anything to divulge.

And so is cheating, but unlike cheating, the hacker's actions may have a positive benefit to society. Sorry, but that's a win for society in my book. Yes, both groups did immoral things, c'est la vie ; at least this time there may be a net positive to society and let's face it the way society's been going it needed one.

I'm not sure the Ashley Madison hack was a benefit to society. Hackers are not just going to target sites that are morally dubious, they will attack wherever they can, for moral, financial or egotistical reasons.

Personally I think that if something's on the internet and someone else wants to find it and knows how, they can.

The hackers stole personal information to use for their own personal gain. That's wrong. The site's users actively sought to stray from their commitments. That's also wrong.

Relationships ruined, people hurt. I'm just not seeing the benefit for society.

But it's none of your business the private sexual lives of others. Keyword=Private. And what these hackers are saying with their actions is that it is society's business who cheats on who. The ramifications of what these hackers did extends well beyond this site, and presents a new social norm, that it's perfectly acceptable to abuse technology and ruin people's private life. Companies, individuals, governments, everyone's going to be more discrete and hunker down, and we'll just have a less open and honest world, all so that some despicable hackers could get some lulz.

I don't know why you're making moral equivalents as if what the hackers did is in any way on the same level as what the customers of this site did. Society's rotten trajectory is the lack of moral reasoning. These hackers only compound and accelerate that decay.

Why do you think adultery is so bad that it is equal to what these hackers did? My hunch is that you probably are just happy that it'll ruin a lot of marriages(something you probably don't take seriously) and hurt Christianity in the process, which is fine and something I don't care for, but my concerns is for the kind of context we're creating, one that won't be so open and trusting of others.